The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by David N Robinson

  So what about the Russians? Have the Iranians tipped them off as well as the Chinese? It is again plausible, all parties standing to be named and shamed by the existence of the dossier. Zamani’s iPhone therefore had to be more than just her simple cell phone, but what exactly? These gadgets are mini-computers in their own right, more than capable of storing documents and photos that might together comprise some kind of dossier of sorts. Lewis needs more time to examine Zamani’s iPhone in detail: he simply isn’t about to do that whilst sitting in public on a train.

  Which is why the idea of ditching the phone, walking away and going into hiding for a while has its attractions. In one fell swoop he could drop below the radar of all his pursuers, only really then having Zeltinger to worry about.

  The train slows to its intermediate stop at the station for terminals 1, 2 and 3 and Lewis finds himself giving an involuntary nervous yawn. No passengers get into his section of the carriage. Within moments the doors are closing and the train is underway once more.

  Saul Zeltinger. Lewis actually quite likes this thorough, if not pedantic, German detective. He is both adversary and yet, strangely almost an ally, certainly when considered against the others in the frame. Lewis knows that he ought to call him shortly, especially if he decides to abandon the phone and go into hiding. Perhaps he could negotiate a deal with the detective: hand over the phone, answer a few questions and then disappear?

  Except that deep down Lewis knows that that is not going to happen. Emotional considerations are going to over-rule any Ben Lewis logic to the contrary. It simply isn’t in his psychological make to walk away and forget about it all, especially not given his history. He made a promise to a dying woman in Hanover Square yesterday afternoon. She asked for his help and he gave her his word. Any talk about walking away and letting the woman down simply doesn’t rate consideration. Especially given his history.

  Which still leaves the million-dollar question to be answered. What is this whole business about? If everything is somehow linked to this dossier, perhaps the original is locked away in a Swiss bank vault, accessed by the key he had found in Zamani’s safe? If so, what is so important about her iPhone? It has to be that the device either contains an electronic version of the dossier – sample pages even – or else is the key to locating the damn thing?

  Lewis opens his eyes, the train already nearing Paddington. The time is almost one-thirty in the afternoon. So many pieces of the puzzle are still only loosely fitting together. The more he thinks about it, the walking away option no longer seems viable. Therefore, assuming he does continue, the next question is where should he be heading next? Logically, it should be to the Swiss bank in Geneva. To get there, his best option for leaving the country would probably be across the English Channel. English border controls for people leaving the country at Dover are invariably almost non-existent and the French are arguably even more lax. Then he has an idea. Why not stop and visit his sister-in-law, Holly, en route? She lives in Canterbury, which is near the Eurotunnel port at Folkestone. More to the point, she has a car. A car might come in really handy given his current predicament. Arguably more convenient than a bike for a long trip, if he borrows Holly’s car, no one is likely to associate it with him. This in turn would make it much more difficult for his pursuers to know where he is heading. After the events of first thing that morning, his bike has become something of a liability.

  As the train doors open, Lewis checks his watch. With a fair wind he should be able to make Canterbury by mid-afternoon.

  66

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  The police sergeant never stood a chance. By the time that Zeltinger had finished thumping on the cell door to alert the man that he wanted to leave, Sui-Lee had already withdrawn the third and final needle from her belt. With the detective departed, the sergeant had come back into the cell. He had asked her, gruffly, to hold out her hands so that he could once more put handcuffs back on. Saying nothing, Sui-Lee had turned her body towards him, her arms outstretched obligingly.

  He never saw it coming. He was turning slightly away from her in order to reach behind him for the cuffs hanging from his belt when it happened. In one swift manoeuvre, she had moved her right hand upwards towards his turned face and stabbed him in the neck with the needle. He made no sound, turning around with disbelief and initial lack of comprehension, only realising too late what had happened. He tried to withdraw the tiny slither of metal but his fingers struggled in vain. By then he was beyond help. The poison was already in his system, the first obvious signs being that his breathing started to become difficult. With terrifying speed his nervous system was shutting down, his knees beginning to buckle.

  Once she was certain that he was no longer a threat, Sui-Lee had taken the keys from his belt. She withdrew the tiny needle and discarded it before leaving the room, quietly closing and locking the door behind her as she went.

  67

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 5

  Zeltinger was in the duty control room on the Arrivals level at the terminal. It was a deceptively bright and airy space, the whole of two walls covered in one-way mirrored glass. Arriving passengers would be completely unaware that they were being subjected to close scrutiny by vigilant eyes working behind the scenes and around the clock.

  Lewis was nowhere to be found, of course. Zeltinger had already concluded that the former Marine must have re-entered the country as an arriving passenger. This fact was given further credence by the news that a suspicious entry onto the Arrivals level down by gate 6 had been recorded at shortly before one o’clock that afternoon. One of the ground staff had reported a stolen or missing security pass. Records showed that the same pass had been used to access a security gate in that vicinity. Zeltinger wanted to check all arriving passengers from that moment onwards. A female duty officer had been assigned the task of showing Zeltinger digital photographs of each and every passenger for the last hour. The large screen in front of her was split into quadrants allowing batches of arriving passengers, four at a time, to be viewed simultaneously.

  A short while later, Zeltinger tapped the woman on the shoulder.

  “There, go back one sequence, can you?” The screen was filled with the grainy images of four different passengers. Two were female, and therefore of no interest. One was an elderly Indian man and again of no concern to Zeltinger. However, the final one of the four, the face in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, looked a distinct possibility.

  “Can you bring this man’s video feed up,” Zeltinger asked, pointing his finger at the image on the screen. The female officer double-clicked her mouse on the face of the individual.

  “Where have you flown in from, sir?”

  “Roma.”

  “You entered the UK only five days ago. What brings you back again so soon?”

  “Chelsea sta giocando il sabato. Foot-ball!”

  “Enjoy the game.”

  “Grazie.”

  An electronic copy of the man’s passport appeared on the screen. The name on the document was Marco Trevoni, the photo similar to, but on closer examination, not the same as, the man they had just watched on the video. That man was Ben Lewis.

  “Can we find out when and where departing passenger, name of Marco Trevoni, might have lost his passport somewhere in the airport today?” he asked the woman. “I think we’ve found our missing person. Back on UK soil once again.”

  Zeltinger thanked her for her help and asked to borrow a room with a secure landline. He was shown to a corner office and closed the door. He picked up the desk phone and dialled a number that he had long-since committed to memory. After a couple of rings, the phone at the other end was answered, a curt male voice uttering a single word of greeting.

  “Cox.”

  Zeltinger’s immediate line boss, Frank Cox, was not one for great small talk.

 
Zeltinger quickly and succinctly explained what had been happening at the airport.

  “You want to keep this under wraps for a while?”

  “Certainly away from both the press and diplomatic channels, yes – for the next twenty-four hours at least, if at all possible.”

  “That’ll be challenging. The Cabinet Office has officially opined, by the way. This is ‘Five’s’ show from here on. Sorry about that. I understand that you and Jake Sullivan might already have been in contact?”

  Zeltinger had been bracing himself for this piece of news, but it didn’t make it any easier hearing it. “Yes, we’ve spoken already.”

  “Good. Let me talk to talk to him now. That will give you time to focus on finding Lewis. A team from Five will want to interrogate this Chinese woman as a priority. Anything else you need?”

  “Well, we already have an apprehension order out on Lewis. If he were to leave the country, the jurisdiction issues would start getting more complicated. I have a hunch he’ll be heading to the Channel coast. We ought to alert the French. Could someone set some of that in motion?”

  “They’ll want to know what it is about. The French always do.”

  “Can’t we just be vague? Why not make up some story about him being a key suspect in an important case, someone we are keeping close tabs on? You know the sort of thing.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks,” Zeltinger said, severing the connection.

  68

  Kensington

  “I think we may have something,” Stefan said, shaking Panich awake. The Russian opened one eye and grunted. He said nothing but was on his feet and awake in an instant. He followed Stefan into the adjacent room. On a large computer screen placed on the corner of a cluttered desk, the picture of a pretty blonde woman was displayed.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Lewis’s late wife’s sister, Holly Williams. She lives on her own, owns a property just outside Canterbury in Kent. Yasenovo sent through Lewis’s recent call lists, God knows who they had to pay in order to get this stuff.”

  “Or kill,” Panich said sharply, already lighting up.

  “Quite. Lewis and this woman have been playing telephone tag these last twenty-four hours. She also has a Facebook page, lots of photographs. The brother-in-law appears to have been an occasional visitor.” He looks at Panich with a nod and a raised eyebrow before navigating to a different zone on the desktop. Another photograph appeared, this time of the same woman and Lewis together on a beach.

  “Canterbury,” said Panich thinking. “That’s near to the channel port of Dover with its ferries and fast trains to France?”

  “That’s what went through my mind. Seemed to me quite a likely stopping off point for someone like Lewis to go to ground.”

  “Have you been able to hack Lewis’s voicemail?”

  “It was empty, a dead end. He must be a listen and delete merchant.”

  Panich clasped his hand on Stefan’s shoulder. “If nothing else, I guess I should pay this woman, Holly, a visit. How long would it take me to get down there from here?”

  “If you took the bike, you’d be there in an about an hour and a half.” He tossed Panich the keys. “Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can find out where Lewis might be heading. If he’s out on his bike, there is a way I think we might be able to trace him. I’ll call as soon as I have news.”

  69

  Nr Heathrow Airport

  Saul Zeltinger settled back in his seat and closed his eyes for the short drive back into central London. He didn’t remain undisturbed for long. Just as the police driver began accelerating onto the M4 motorway, his mobile phone buzzed him awake.

  “Zeltinger.”

  “Lucy Campbell again, sir, duty officer at SO18. There’s been a complication at Heathrow. The Chinese woman who was being held in custody, Tan Sui-Lee. She’s escaped. She also managed to kill the duty sergeant.”

  “Oh shit. What on earth happened?”

  “We don’t yet know.”

  “Any idea where she might be?”

  “We’re still searching. All units at the airport are on full alert. The chances of her getting away, however, have to be high. She had about a fifteen minute head start before we discovered she was missing.”

  “Have you let Jake Sullivan at MI5 know yet?”

  “Not yet. You’re the first I’ve spoken to.”

  “Can you call him, urgently? And keep me posted the moment you have any news. We’ll need to mobilise police units in and around the Capital.” He rang off and then made two further urgent calls before settling back in his seat. The fingers of both hands were steepled under chin as he considered these latest developments. Sui-Lee’s escape and her killing of a police officer really was a game changer, adding much more urgency to the task of finding and detaining Lewis. Wherever Lewis was heading, Zeltinger was convinced the Chinese woman would now be hot on his heels in pursuit.

  What would he be doing next if he were Lewis? Either going to ground or heading somewhere or doing something that the Zamani woman might have told him to go or do. Zeltinger felt a certain respect towards the former Marine even though Lewis had lied to him. This was a man who had the courage to help a dying woman and subsequently fight off a small army of both Russian and now Chinese pursuers determined to kill him. It suddenly struck him: there was a way he might be able to keep tabs on Lewis’s movements. He picked up his phone again, this time to call his office in Savile Row police station.

  70

  Nr Wigmore Street

  Sui-Lee was low on ideas. By almost every measure, the last twenty-four hours had been a catalogue of failure. Since escaping police custody and, much more importantly, having killed a police officer, she would officially be a wanted person: someone never able to operate freely in the United Kingdom again, destined to be exiled to China in disgrace, her mission a failure. She had brought shame and dishonour on her and her family.

  Donning her trusty curly black wig once again, the transformation in her appearance was sufficient to allow her to feel confident in taking the train back to London’s Paddington station without fear of being spotted. Gone was the pretty young Asian woman with flowing, long black hair. In its place, a rather dowdy-looking middle-aged Chinese who at first glance by unsuspecting western eyes, bore little or no relation to the woman recently held in custody and whose picture was surely about to adorn the Metropolitan Police’s highly-wanted list.

  Cheng was at Paddington to meet her. The increased police presence on the concourse caused him to wait outside the station on his bike. Together they rode to their small rented apartment located in a four-storey purpose-built block behind Wigmore Street. He parked the bike in the basement car park and they both took the slow and creaky elevator in silence to the fourth floor.

  The apartment had been rented with the bare minimum of furnishings. It was an operational crash pad, somewhere that could be vacated in an instant. All that they had wanted had been privacy, a good broadband connection, and somewhere central with easy access everywhere. It had met the criteria on all counts.

  “I need cheering up, Cheng. It’s been a disastrous day.” Sui-Lee had slumped down onto a tatty two-seater sofa that, alongside an oval table and one other chair, comprised all the furniture in the sparse living room.

  “I gather Heathrow didn’t go as planned.”

  She related the events of that morning to him, including her escape from police custody at Heathrow.

  Cheng whistled. “You were lucky to get away. They would have thrown the book at you.”

  “Quite. After an embarrassing trial, I’d have been shipped back to China and quietly executed. I contemplated using the last remaining needle on myself.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes, ouch indeed. Anyway, now we have a seco
nd chance. Where might Lewis have gone to ground? He can’t just have vanished into thin air?”

  “Actually, I have an idea about how to answer that. Let me show you.” Cheng grabbed a laptop that had been charging on the floor in one corner of the room and came and sat next to Sui-Lee on the sofa.

  “I began thinking that we could either do this the hard way, monitoring mobile phone signals and using tracking devices and the like, or we could try and get others do the work for us. Thinking about the latter line of thought for a moment, who else might be interested in knowing Lewis’s location beside us?”

  “Well, the Russians for one,” she said and then thought some more. “Not to mention the UK police as well.”

  “Precisely. Sticking with the police angle, it got me thinking that if they had a nationwide search out to try and locate Lewis then all we would need to do was to find a way to tap into that knowledge.”

  “And how do we do that? It’s impossible to hack their systems. We’ve tried that before. It simply doesn’t work.”

  “We use someone on the inside to get the information for us.”

  Sui-Lee liked this idea. “Go on.”

  “Well,” said Cheng, “If that was to happen, we would need to find ourselves some leverage over such an insider. I may have found the ideal candidate. Let me show you.”